Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Slobodianyk (5 September 1941, Kyiv - 10 August 2008, Morristown, New Jersey, USA) was a prominent pianist virtuoso of Ukrainian descent.
Biography.
Oleksandr Slobodyanyk was born in 1941 in Kyiv into an intelligent family with a passion for music: his father played the violin and his mother played the piano. The father of the future pianist, Oleksandr Pavlovych, was a well-known professor of psychiatry in Ukraine[1], author of the monograph Psychotherapy, Suggestion, Hypnosis, which has been reprinted several times. Her mother was a music teacher by profession, and her friends called her "madam" because she stood out as a 19th-century noblewoman in love with music and poetry. She became her son's first teacher. Oleksandr was a "prodigy" - at the age of six, he was already performing on the radio.
After the Second World War, the family moved to Lviv, where his father was appointed to the Department of Psychiatry at the Lviv Medical Institute and taught a course on Forensic Psychiatry at the Law Faculty of Ivan Franko University of Lviv.
Oleksandr received his primary music education at the Lviv Ten-Year Music School in the class of the outstanding music teacher Lidia Golembo. At that time, the future "colour" of world music was studying in parallel classes at the school: Viktor Yaresko and Oleksandr Muravsky, violinists Oleh Krysa, Bohodar Kotorovych and Mathis Weitzner, cellist Kharytyna Kolessa, and composer Bohdan Yanivsky.
At the age of 15 (1957), Oleksandr moved to Moscow, where he studied at the Central Music School under the tutelage of Heinrich Neuhaus. He also began his studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and graduated from the Conservatory in the class of Neuhaus's student Vera Hornostava (1965). He also completed his postgraduate studies with her (1967).
He was awarded prizes at the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw (1960) and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1966).
Slobodianyk's regular concert activity began in 1963 in the USSR. In 1968, he made his concert debut in the United States. The concert at Carnegie Hall was highly praised by Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz. American music critics recognised Slobodianyk as "the leader of his artistic generation". His American manager was Saul Yurok, to whom Slobodianyk was recommended by Sviatoslav Richter. The pianist made numerous tours of the United States, successfully toured Europe, Canada, Japan, and Latin America.
Oleksandr Slobodyanyk's grave, Baikove cemetery
His popularity in the West is evidenced by a dialogue between Sviatoslav Richter and impresario Sol Yurko. Richter complained to Yurko about the significant decrease in the number of invitations he had recently received to tour the United States, to which he was already accustomed, while Slobodianyk, on the contrary, was literally bombarded with invitations. To which Sol Yurok replied:
...What can I do if every other woman in the US carries Slobodianyk's photo in her purse!
However, his concert career in the West was fatally interrupted in 1979, when Western countries boycotted the then USSR because of military aggression against Afghanistan. Only after a nine-year absence from the American stage, in 1988, did the pianist make a concert tour of the United States again, which newspapers called a "triumphant return". In 1989, Slobodianyk moved to the United States, where he was mainly engaged in concert activities until the end of his life. Here he met his second wife, the pianist Larysa Krupa.
In 1993, he founded the Morristown International Art Festival and served as its artistic director.
Slobodianyk died on 10 August 2008 from meningitis. He was buried, at his own request, in his native Kyiv, at the Baikove Cemetery.
Creative work
Slobodianyk's concert programmes have always been characterised by great works: piano concertos by Beethoven, Chopin, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff (No. 3) by Schnittke, sonatas by Prokofiev (No. 6, 7), Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky, Reger Variations, Schumann's Fantasia and Carnival, a cycle of all Chopin's etudes, Lyatoshynsky's Sonata-Ballad, etc. Playing both classical and contemporary music, he was the first interpreter of concertos and solo works by such composers as Boris Tishchenko, Alfred Schnittke, and Alexander Tchaikovsky. In 1990, he performed for the first time at Carnegie Hall the Five Aphorisms for Piano written for him by Alfred Schnittke to the poems of Joseph Brodsky, with the texts read by the poet himself. And during the Carnegie Hall centenary celebrations in 1991, Slobodianik, together with Gidon Kremer, gave the world premiere of Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 5 with the Cleveland Orchestra.
As an artist of high international standing, Slobodianik was characterised by a great concert style of performance. The technical side of his playing was brilliant. The defining features of his style are: the expression of sharp, sudden reactions combined with strict logic of thought; powerful and lush sound, coloured by pedal resonance with a very precise, even percussive manner of sound production; strong-willed, organised rhythm. The Los Angeles Times wrote: "Slobodianik plays not just virtuoso, he performs long-known pieces, but in his own way, adding to the immortal works a subtle new, infinitely talented and original quality." He was invited to play at concerts by orchestras conducted by such titans of world music as Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Mstislav Rostropovich, Valery Gergiev, and Yuri Temirkanov. But while performing all over the world, Slobodianyk found time to regularly come to Ukraine, particularly to Lviv, where he introduced his new programmes to the audience.
Slobodianyk's recordings were released by Angel, Melody, Eurodisc and MCA. His discography includes recordings of the legendary LIVE concert of all 24 Chopin etudes.
Pedagogical activity
Professor at Montclair State University (New Jersey), USA.
Visiting Professor at the St Petersburg State Conservatoire, Russia.
Interesting facts
The composer Alfred Schnittke dedicated to Slobodianyk (together with Joseph Brodsky) the musical cycle for piano and orchestra "Five Aphorisms for Piano".
Family
wife - Natalia Slobodianyk, cellist and music teacher
son - Oleksandr Slobodyanyk Jr, pianist
wife - Larissa Krupa, an American pianist of Ukrainian descent.
Awards and honorary titles
diploma winner of the VI International Fryderyk Chopin Competition in Warsaw (1960)
laureate of the III International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1966, IV prize)
Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (1974)
Lenin Komsomol Prize (1978)
